Columns

In a review of state agency expenses, The Nerve found that in fiscal 2015-16 the state spent more than $989,000 on catering and meals.
This total does not include charges from the S.C. Public Service Authority, the S.C. Education Lottery Commission, the S.C. Jobs-Economic Development Authority, and state-supported colleges and universities. The spending at these agencies is not covered by the Comptroller General’s website.

My husband owns a small business, and from time to time I’ve heard him say, “You can’t take a pee anymore without a government permission slip.”
Please excuse the slight vulgarity. I bring it up because, in my line of work, it’s almost literally true.

With his death Saturday at age 96, we reflect on the life of former S.C. Sen. John Drummond, who served our state and our nation well.
A native of Ninety Six, John Drummond was born in 1919 to a family of millworkers, like so many other S.C. families of that era. Called to serve our country in World War II, he was a pilot and paratrooper, acquiring the nickname “Ace” due to his flying prowess.

The term “legislative state” gets thrown around a lot by people trying to describe our state’s power structure. That’s supposed to make our gross imbalance of power seem like a reasonable alternative – a “legislative state,” as opposed to an “executive state,” sounds like a legitimate thing.

This little town of Lancaster does not have big problems yet. Still the citizens need to understand where the source of America’s problems started.
Maybe the Lets Talk folks will get to the root of the problem and cure the issue before it becomes a big problem here.
The beginning of the problem is the lack of God in the lives of citizens, the God of our founders who is our creator. He is the source or our understanding of the truth in our world today. Without God’s laws in our lives, then man’s laws are of no use to us either.

Preamble – When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the culinary bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and preeminent station to which the Laws of BBQ and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to declare South Carolina’s BBQ Supremacy.

Nepotism is a well-known part of S.C. state government.
Lawmakers routinely appoint their siblings and spouses and friends to university boards and various state commissions, for example. Less well known are the outsized salaries associated with some of those positions.
Before considering the salaries of lawmakers’ friends and relatives, though, take a look at the salaries of those in charge of core state agencies – law enforcement and the like.

Recently, I was talking with a Columbia woman who works with government contracting on the local, state and national level. She has built a multimillion-dollar business, and she runs it with honesty and integrity.
In talking about her work with S.C. state government, she said something that stopped me dead in my tracks. “State government has become so corrupt on every level,” she said, “and it’s been that way for so long that people just accept it as business as usual – just the way it is.”

Last week, the S.C. Transportation Commission voted to spend $21.5 million in federal money on a list of projects associated with Congressman Jim Clyburn.
The commission-approved project list looks very different from the state Department of Transportation’s road project priority list, however. It includes, for example, $11.5 million for a Main Street revitalization project in Sumter and about $360,000 for pedestrian facilities in Anderson – neither of which are anywhere on DOT’s priority list.

I got the mail today.
A couple of bills. A greeting card. Some catalogs. A newspaper. One package that my wife grabbed right away. (Wonder what that was?)
Lately, it occurs to me how completely I take for granted that I will get the mail tomorrow.